In The Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune Book Review

You wanna know something? A few years ago my family bought a robotic vacuum cleaner, and we decided to name him Rambo. I had no idea for the longest time that they chose that name based off of this book. And I can see where the enjoyable enthusiasm in the name came from; Rambo is quite the character.

So, In The Lives of Puppets is a new take on Pinocchio, taking place in an unknown forest, with a bunch of little treehouse cottages built dozens of feet above ground. There, lives a father figure of a robot named Giovanni Lawson, Gio for short, and his human son, Victor Lawson. It’s just the two of them living a nice quiet life, alongside two bot companions; a vacuum named Rambo, as I mentioned, who seems to be on a sugar rush 24/7. Then there’s Nurse Ratched, a bot with a screen for a face like Karen from SpongeBob SquarePants, and some sternness for rules but none of the animosity of the original character from Cuckoo’s Nest.

Vic has lived with Gio since he was a baby, and day-to-day life has been just fine. Sometimes Vic and his dad and two robot companions go to The Scraps, a junkyard with new little rusty treasures. And one day, Vic finds a strange looking robot; a buff and handsome one, but Vic is asexual so there’s not really any desire there. They decide to take him home, without Gio knowing, and try to repair him, and this will start a chain reaction shattering his little life for good.

This is the third book I’ve read from TJ Klune; I’d previously tried out Cerulean Sea and Whispering Door (I gave 3 and a half stars out of 5 to each). And Klune’s style seems to be taking universes that are fascinating enough for franchises, and instead choosing storylines within them focusing not on demolishing dystopias or stopping bad guys, but rather having the protagonists figure themselves out and find ways to be happy. And Klune does these in ways that take time to get to the payoff, but in the previous books, said payoff was good enough to warrant recommendations. Cerulean Sea and Whispering Door were books that made me feel good, not just at the end but throughout. In The Lives of Puppets aims a little higher in terms of plot than those other books, but sadly, this one didn’t work for me like the others. 

I’d put it this way; it gives us a mission, whereas the other books were more about characters learning to live again. This one has that too, but it has a main adventure and goal sprinkled in. I’m a fan of that. I’d have to be like the original Nurse Ratched not to be. But the problem, in this case, is it noticeably drags its feet on the mission, which hurts the other aspects of the book. Its humour, its sort-of romance, its quirkiness; it’s a little harder to enjoy those things when they feel like they’re getting in the way of possible excitement.

Vic’s main family is made up of all likeable characters. Nurse Ratched’s bluntness yet loyalty, Rambo’s hyper sense of humour, and how they work off of each other better than Nurse Ratched would care to admit, made me smile and chuckle more than a few times. Gio’s care as a father was warm. Hap ends up a terrific addition as well. But as time went on, I started to tire of their banter and Rambo constantly getting himself into trouble. It felt like reading the same thing over and over. There’s only so many times Rambo can try to replicate humans in the sexual or scatological sense before we wish Rambo would just focus on the task at hand.

My parents and sister read this book and they found it funny. I do too, within fair reason. And if you’re a patient reader, In The Lives of Puppets may charm you. And I’d even go as far as to say the characters here are more memorable than in Klune’s other works. But all these things couldn’t disguise the fact the book was boring. My grade in this case is 2 stars, but if I were giving exact numbers, this would probably be a few digits lower.

My grade (as I mentioned): 2 stars out of 5